Rainbow Warrior enjoys the calm between the storms in Bremen

The Rainbow Warrior has returned to the Fassmer shipyard for a quick planned maintenance stop on her journey to Barcelona, for some tweaking and refinements after her first six weeks afloat. On board the transit from Stockholm was Swedish music artist and long term Greenpeace supporter Regina Lund, who here shares her great excitement about being on board her ‘Rainbow Star’ and awe at the professionalism of our crew.

It’s also been an interesting experience for the shipyard engineers who worked on the ship for a year, to see her six weeks into her ‘active’ life, having already visited Hamburg, Amsterdam, London and Stockholm, hosted tours for over 30,000 supporters, artists, media and staff and experienced a wide range of adventures.

It’s hard to believe its only six weeks since we launched our new lady on a crisp, sunny afternoon in Bremen, Germany, at the Fassmer shipyard where she was built. We all have fond memories of her beautiful naming ceremony hosted by our Executive Director, Kumi, and the ship’s godmother and Greenpeace Canada campaigner, Melina Laboucan-Massimo of the Cree Nation in Canada. Melina spoke so poignantly about her connection to the Alberta Tar Sands, and it was sad therefore to hear just this week of Canada’s worrying threat to withdraw from the Kyoto protocol at COP17 in Durban.

Stomach settlers anyone…?

Our lady still has another four weeks of her European tour to go, with Spanish and Italian plans shaping up very nicely. She will be seaborne again this weekend, making the two-week transit journey along the French and Spanish coast to Barcelona via the notoriously rough weathered Bay of Biscay… a name that strikes fear in the stomachs of those with a sensitive disposition who just endured a particularly rough transit through the Baltic Sea en route to Bremen… ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stranger’ I’m told by a hardened crew member.